@Dennari43 @OtherGreenGamer
Thanks for explaining it, that makes sense. I guess I have a very different attitude to the the crafting system, and possibly the game, to some other people. I've always seen crafting as a means to an end, a relatively minor part of the game to provide you with tools to explore your own creativity. When I started playing the crafting system was the biggest turn-off because it created a barrier between me and even the most basic elements of the game. Having to constantly leave the game to refer to the wiki was frustrating and time consuming, and got in the way of me actually exploring aspects of the game I was interested in.

@OtherGreenGamer Part of the fun of Minecraft was discovering what you could make with your own logic and thinking, and the joy that comes when you do.

I don't feel like this aspect of the game has been lost at all. I suspect the majority of players here have most of the crafting recipes committed to memory and still enjoy discovering what they make with the tools given to them.

For me Minecraft has always been about using the tools available to create something incredible in form or function, something greater than the sum of its parts that you can feel proud of. Learning the crafting system was something you had to slog through to get to the real game.

I realise that people don't seem to like the recipe book, what I don't understand is why. It doesn't remove anything from the game. It's not a change to how crafting works, you can still craft things normally, it just let's you see the recipes in game and moves items to the crafting grid for you.
I always thought it a little absurd that to learn to play minecraft you have to go out of the game to look up online how to craft even the most basic of things. Adding something to the game that means players don't have to look away from the game to search the wiki doesn't seem like a bad thing.

I am genuinely baffled by why people dislike this feature can anyone explain it to me?

I don't think I understand. What is it that you don't like and why?

@Abbasilol no xD

Fuck you

@_Confederacy_ Yes

@Cileklim That is extremely useful, thanks!

and hey thanks!

@Cellexya The anvil goes up to 39 before its too expensive. I was talking about the prior work cost though, which after 31 would be 63. Which means you can anvil something up to 6 times before it costs too much.

This is a bit complicated to answer so here's a short answer and then the TL;DR:

Short answer:
Combine books in pairs first, then add them to sword or whatever doing the most expensive first.
If you do them like in the pic below it should use the least total levels, and have the least expensive steps.

(numbers might be a smidge off)

TL;DR
Anvil costs come from two things; prior work cost, and enchantment cost (which are added)

Prior work cost starts at 0, and each time you do any anviling doubles and 1 is added. So it goes 0, 1, 3, 7, 15, 31, then is too expensive.
If you combine two things the prior work cost for both is added.
If you do books in pairs first you avoid having to pay really high prior work costs (pic above anything above 7)

Enchantment cost is the level of the enchantment x some multiplier. Multipliers seem to be random, you can find them here if you really want to.
The enchant cost is only calculated for the enchants you're adding (second anvil slot). So when combining books you want to put the cheap ones in the second slot.
E.g. looting III costs 6 and unbreaking III costs 3 so we do Looting + Unbreaking, not Unbreaking + Looting.

By combining books in pairs before adding them to weapons/tools/armour you do pay the enchantment cost of some of the enchantments twice, but that's made up for by the saving in prior work cost if you do it right. If you can get everything right you can make any fully enchanted gear without any step costing more than 15 levels.

Anyone still reading?

Woah wait! Are you guys telling me that there is something on the internet that is not true?!? Impossible!

@Tez1010 Nice! Glad I could help. This behaviour seems kinda glitchy so I wouldn't count on working forever. I think it relates to this bug:

https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-108469

Which causes this really weird bug:
https://bugs.mojang.com/browse/MC-44514
that seems to let you put a player in an unloaded chunk

That wasn't quite what I was suggesting. The key part I added was to have the marker entity teleported from spawn to a chunk that can never be loaded, at a coordinates relative to the players death.

Teleporting entities and then targeting them seems to work as follows:
Case 1. If origin is loaded and destination is loaded; entity can be targeted until destination unloads
Case 2. If origin is loaded and destination is unloaded; entity can be targeted until origin unloads UNLESS destination becomes loaded before origin unloads. Then entity can be targeted until destination unloads.

With the way you have it you're getting the first case whether or not you summon the marker in spawn, so you lose the entity eventually.

What I did was to run
/execute @a[score_HasDied_min=1] ~ ~ ~ /teleport @e[name=Back,tag=AddID] ~+210000 ~ ~
on an entity in spawn

Which forces the second case, and since the spawn chunks don't unload you can target it indefinitely. The value of 210,000 comes from the world boarder, which I set at 200,000. That way the chunk the marker is in can never be loaded by players, which would prevent you targeting it once that chunk unloads again.

Then you can just do
/execute @e[name=Back,tag=AddID] ~ ~ ~ /teleport @a[score_HasDied_min=1] ~-210000 ~ ~

@Tez1010 Me again. I though that might have been what you meant, but couldn't figure out the syntax of spaces and commas. Got there now.

Regarding tping entities yet again: whether or not you can target the entitiy indefinitely in unloaded chunks seems to depend on the status of where you tp it from. So if you tp it from a chunk that then becomes unloaded the game looses it. But if you tp it from spawn chunks which never get unloaded (unless the server restarts) you can target it to your hearts content.

The reason why I'm still harping on about this is that you can use it to make a very simple /back command, if the world border is something less than 15million.
When someone dies summon a marker entity inside the spawn chunks, and then execute /teleport (not tp) for the player, using relative coordinates and adding the diameter of the world border to either the x or z coordinate. You then have a marker a known number of blocks away from the players death location, that never despawns and can be targeted until the server closes. You can then just execute another /teleport command at the marker entity, reverse the relative coordinates and hey presto the player is back where they died. No need to mess around with finding coordinates.
I did this on SP, not sure if it works on MP - I don't quite understand if you could create a different marker entity for each player that died or not.

@PlesleronTepryos I don't think that you can. From what I can tell the best you can do test if a specific player is in a certain radius.